


you feel like a symphony

by chrysanthemumsies



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blindness, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M, One Shot, Romance, Season/Series 04, Teasers & Trailers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 09:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8839435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysanthemumsies/pseuds/chrysanthemumsies
Summary: John was leaving. John was going back into the battlefield and God, what was the bloody point to all of this if it didn’t keep John safe? Sherlock’s death, his return, the wedding, Mary’s bullet in his chest, Magnussen. Was there ever even a reason?“I’ll come back,” John said directly to Sherlock despite being halfway out the door. In that moment, Sherlock could see him. Jaw tensed, eyes both carefully blank and utterly turbulent depending on if you saw them in the right light. Fists clenching and unclenching. Determined. Strong. Brave. “I promise.”There was his reason.





	

**Author's Note:**

> a little fic dedicated to the newest series 4 trailer! here is the little drabble of how The Kiss will go by tumblr user [a-candle-for-sherlock:](http://a-candle-for-sherlock.tumblr.com/)
> 
> "Sherlock tells John he loves him in the last seconds before he has to go out alone to confront Mary. John is either speechless, or tells him back as he’s rushed out the door by the agents. John goes out to do it while Sherlock waits for him with Mycroft in the beach fortress, and cries (because John did say “It was my turn”) and when they give the all clear Sherlock runs out to find John and John strides right up with his gun in his hand and kisses Sherlock."
> 
> let's hope to all of the gods above that we're on the right track!

_‘I love you.’_

Oh, god, that was it, wasn’t it? Sherlock _loved_ him. That much had always been obvious, Sherlock knew, but... that was the only thing to do, wasn’t it? To say? Sherlock loved John and had to speak it out loud (this dreadful, secretive thing) and was currently blind to the world in the most literal sense of the phrase. 

Inside of his mind, he could see John with perfect clarity, silver at the edges and a harshness to his brow that was both incongruous and so terribly, terribly _familiar._

He was thin now, much too thin. Gaunt. Marriage to an assassin and a faux pregnancy had done him no favors. He was beautiful. He never wore jumpers anymore, and had begun to put product in his hair. At first Sherlock had supposed it was his sort of mid-life crisis, but now... he wasn’t so sure. 

John Watson was a delightful enigma that Sherlock had the privilege of never solving. 

“Sherlock.” 

His voice, slow and patient despite its frightened undertones, the pattering of a bassoon beneath the chorus. Sherlock blinked back into the present, looking around blindly before he remembered that that didn’t do any good. Not anymore, at least. “John,” he replied, as if on instinct. 

221B. No, strike that; the safehouse Mycroft had organized for them on the coast, waves crashing somewhere outside and his skin damp and sticky with salt. There was a slight grit in the air. His fingers tensed on the grained wood of the table in front of him, the texture soothing him as if it tethered him to the Earth. It was easy to retreat into his mind when all he met in reality was the hopeless veil of black. 

Sherlock slid his hand out, palm-up and fingers slightly curled. After a beat, a smaller, warmer hand slipped into the grip with a squeeze. Sunshine. It had only been a few days of this temporary hell, the blindness not permanent but inconvenient, and John had adapted to the change even better than Sherlock had. 

“It’s time,” Sherlock murmured, thumb rubbing John’s hand unabashedly. It wasn’t a question, and John didn’t take it as such. 

There was a car door shutting outside. Wind moaned ominously through the house, creaking the foundation. With another lasting squeeze, John made to pull away. 

Mind Palace. A gun in his hands, forced to choose. Mycroft or John. His head or his heart. His heart is what got him into this bloody mess in the first place. It was his head, however damaged it may be, that would need to pull them out of this mess as it always had. John was what ruined him, and it would take Mycroft to make things right again. 

But, for the first time in his life, Sherlock entertained the idea of the opposite. 

Footsteps approaching. “John,” he said, gripping John’s hand in both of his with smooth, kneading rolls. He was trembling, unable to stop. “There’s... there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. For quite some time.” 

It was no lost on either of them that the words directly reminisced of the exile, the final words spoken. Sherlock could hear John’s smile, sad and dripped with low brass. “There’s no daughter to name,” he pointed out, free hand reaching up to stroke Sherlock’s arm. “And I do hope that this isn’t the last time we meet. Would put a damper on everything, I’d say.” 

It would. Sherlock tilted his head up, hoping that he was meeting John’s eyes. John was exactly 172.5 centimeters tall. John had eyes the color of the Atlantic whenever you were halfway to America, and while Sherlock could imagine the hue in perfect clarity he would give anything to see it in person again, right now. Here. His hair was probably damp with sea salt itself, almost fully silver now with stubborn streaks of gold in the back. Sherlock trailed his fingers until they were pressing lightly against the inside of John’s wrist. 

It was just a step off of a ledge, now. The fall. The landing was for another time, another place, and it would most definitely kill him, but the fall was the adventure, he thought. When there was nothing to lose and everything to prove, the fall is what mattered. 

“I love you,” Sherlock said.

A gasp, nearly silent if Sherlock wasn’t attuned to everything the world could offer a blind man. The pulse beneath his fingertips fluttered, soft and batting like drops of rain hitting a window. John removed his hands, only to rejoin them around Sherlock’s jaw, horribly fragile and unsteady as his thumbs slid along cheekbones. Sherlock wanted to run his fingers over John’s face and feel his expression in his hands. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” he breathed. 

The door opened, and footsteps thumped on the wooden floor in a percussive concert. Timpani, bass. Mycroft’s umbrella was the snare. John dropped his hands reluctantly, trailing them down his neck before turning to face the front, hand resting on his shoulder. Grounding. Sherlock closed his eyes to no difference. 

“She’s in position,” Mycroft informed, and something must have flashed across John’s expression because he said firmly, “ _Now,_ Dr. Watson. There isn’t a second to waste.” 

John’s hand gripped painfully, the stuttering of an earthquake in his fingers. “I... I have to...” 

Footsteps hurried towards them, heavy-footed, and John let Sherlock go with haste and moved away. The cold at Sherlock’s side was instant. 

John was leaving. John was going back into the battlefield and _God,_ what was the bloody point to all of this if it didn’t keep John safe? Sherlock’s death, his return, the wedding, Mary’s bullet in his chest, Magnussen. Was there ever even a reason?

“I’ll come back,” John said directly to Sherlock despite being halfway out the door. In that moment, Sherlock could see him. Jaw tensed, eyes both carefully blank and utterly turbulent depending on if you saw them in the right light. Fists clenching and unclenching. Determined. Strong. _Brave_. “I promise.”

There was his reason. When the door closed, Sherlock ground the heels of his palms into his useless eye sockets and couldn’t control the sob spilling from his throat, utterly uncalled for. 

A beat, and then his brother. “Your Dr. Watson is one of the strongest men I’ve ever known,” Mycroft said softly, tender and horridly familiar from childhood. When he placed his hand over Sherlock’s, placating, Sherlock couldn’t help gripping it back and pressing it against his temple, tears stinging his eyes. “If there’s anyone who can dismantle Moriarty’s chain once and for all, it’s him.”

“He loved her,” Sherlock hoarsed. “He chose her and married her and vowed to spend his life with her. And she’s evil, she’s... _How?_ How did I not see it?” He ground his brother’s hand into his hair, crushing it to his scalp in anguish. “I couldn’t protect him, Mycroft. And now he has to protect himself against the person he shouldn’t _ever_ have had to.”

The rain came in, pattering the roof with a symphony of woodwinds. “You misunderstand as usual, brother mine,” Mycroft voiced into the quiet, impossibly kind. “This isn’t to protect himself. Everything, the marriage, the secrecy, the mission. Destroying A.G.R.A, the root of Moriarty’s network and the last of the fingers in the pies. It hasn’t been for him. It’s all been for  _you.”_

Like the sun breaking into dawn, the first bloom of spring and the lone piccolo in the melody, everything slotted into place. 

Inside, both Mind and Heart at his shoulder, the words John Watson had always left unspoken were suddenly and completely obvious. The pain, the grief. The bravery. Sherlock opened his eyes inside of the padded cell, looking directly into his soul without ambiguity. The words John had always meant to say but never did, the words that John had kept from the world but left imprinted in his footsteps. 

“I love you,” Sherlock said into the mirror, breathless in his revelation. 

Behind his right shoulder, John glanced up to meet his gaze. His lips quirked into a smile. “There you’ve got it,” he said. Behind him, the french horns sang. 

 

*** * ***

 

“JOHN!” Sherlock yelled, the coast’s wind whipping at his clothes and sand sticking to his bare feet. The rain had pushed further into England over the past several hours of waiting, soaking Sherlock’s clothes and dripping his hair into his face. The deafening howl of the helicopter was landing, as if was everywhere all at once. “JOHN!” He tried again. 

A burst of sound in the distance, a definitive direction slightly to the right. He turned towards the noise and began to run, the sand thankfully yielding to his uncoordinated feet. 

Mycroft yelled after Sherlock, impatient like a parent with a disobedient child. As such the metaphor allowed, Sherlock ignored him and ran faster. 

“Sherlock!” John called. 

Sherlock skidded to a stop, looking around frantically despite his blindness, trying to get a read on sound alone. There was a cacophony of sound, out of tune. Dissonant. Fortissimo. 

He heard John come closer, the helicopter still in gear and kicking off from the sand. When he was somewhat close, there was the metallic click in the air. John’s gun. He was disarming it, Sherlock realized, emptying it of ammunitionbefore tossing it off to the side. The waves crashed and rolled with the storm. 

“I killed her!” John shouted over the thunder, closer than before but still much too far. “She tried to... I killed her.” He stepped closer. Sherlock had no way of knowing that John was precisely the length of an arm away, his sense of sound in such a loud atmosphere touchy at best, but he could _feel_ him.

Sherlock swallowed, eyes flickering around blindly as if the moment they landed on John’s gaze, his sight would return. 

“I killed her,” John repeated, slightly hitching at the end. “Do you... Do you still love me?” 

Oh. Oh, John. He reached out his arms in the semblance of a waiting embrace. “Always, John. Alw-”

John closed the distance with a desperate sound, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s waist and crushing their lips together as close as the universe would allow. Sherlock scrabbled his hands along John’s shoulders and tried to push even closer. In both the blessing and curse of gravity, both men toppled into the sand beneath, Sherlock’s breath whooshing as his back hit the ground. It was worthwhile to have John above him, though, caging him into the earth. His giggles rumbled into Sherlock’s stomach.

Ah. So this is what love felt like. 

Sherlock ran his fingers along the laughter lines of John’s face, more pronounced in his delighted grin. “You have wrinkles,” he commented with a playful twist of his nose. 

“And you have seaweed in your hair.” 

Bugger it. “I wish I could see you,” Sherlock sighed, cupping his hands around the face above him. 

John chuckled. “The blindness is temporary, Holmes. Trust me, I’m a doctor.” 

 _Holmes._ The way John said it, his surname as if it was some sort of endearment like _love_ or _darling_ brought the bubbling of laughter from his chest. Sherlock’s fingers were insistent beneath John’s eyes. “ _Watson._ John. You feel like a symphony, you know.” 

John didn’t even have to ask. “I know, I know. Come here.” 

Sherlock flipped them around and pressed John into the sand with his lips, the rain pelting at his back and sound of his brother’s footsteps shuffling closer. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Because in the darkness, there was a glint of silver and an _I love you_ and a promise and the taste of freedom on the horizon and _John_ , and that was enough. 

That was more than enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope that you liked it, and follow my tumblr [@chrysanthemumsies](http://chrysanthemumsies.tumblr.com/) for all things johnlock!


End file.
